Project proposal Bright Minds Assistantships February 2022
Exploring the scope of public engagement of a European University
Department: Sustainable Development Research group: Environmental Governance
Supervisor: Dr. Dries Hegger / Dr. Annisa Triyanti / Dr. Marjanneke Vijge Email address: D.L.T.Hegger@uu.nl
Project description
Utrecht University’s Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development is involved in the CHARM-EU initiative, a model for a CHallenge-driven, Accessible, Research-based, Mobile European University that aims to ‘Reconcile humanity with the Planet’. CHARM-EU is one of the first newly established European Universities that the European Commission funds since 2019. It is also the first one to set up a European inter-university joint degree Master’s programme in Global Challenges for Sustainability (https://www.charm-eu.eu/masters/globalchallenges) in which UU participates. In addition to that, UU’s Copernicus Institute is also involved in the research component of CHARM-EU called TORCH (https://www.charm-eu.eu/torch). CHARM-EU and TORCH provide opportunities to pilot and test highly innovative research and educational methods that, if successful, can be further expanded across the partner universities and beyond. UU’s Environmental Governance section is the lead of a Work Package focusing on how Universities can become better at public engagement and transdisciplinary science.
As a Bright Mind fellow, you will assist the researchers (Marjanneke Vijge, Annisa Triyanti and Dries Hegger) with the execution of this Work Package, which will include the following tasks:
- Assisting us with conducting a literature/document review to acquire an overview of the current state of the art of insights into public engagement
- Assisting us with data collection and analysis on good practices and lessons learned in public engagement within UU
- Assisting us with the development of the UU project report and compilation of report from partner universities
- Potentially assisting us with the writing of a scientific article related to public engagement and transdisciplinary science
The activities listed above should lead to concrete report consisting of recommendations for UU’s executive board, UU’s public engagement efforts more generally and for the European Commission.
Hopefully this will ensure that involvement of societal actors and citizens in the research and innovation process and ensuring high standards of research integrity and scientific ethics are promoted, within CHARM-EU and beyond.
The project as a whole runs from May 2021 until the end of 2022, WP7 runs until the end of March 2022.
You would be appointed as assistant on this project for a pre-specified period, but we expect you to start as soon as possible. When you start, we will discuss and decide upon a more detailed demarcation of your work in such a way that it links up with your interest and experience but also complements the TORCH project as a whole. We foresee that the most common research activities would be: desk research; in- depth interviews, report writing, next to, of course, regular exchange with the supervisors. We hope that in the beginning of 2022 it will again be possible to conduct a large proportion of these activities in a face- to-face setting. But in case COVID-19 still poses restrictions by then, these research activities can be easily shifted online without leading to major problems or delays.
Project proposal Bright Minds Assistantships February 2022
Job requirements
To conduct the above-mentioned research activities successfully, you need to be a student with a clear social science profile (e.g. Human Geography; Sustainable Development, track Earth System Governance or International Development Studies). Of course, you should have an interest in public engagement activities and be willing to study these academically. Hands-on experience with public engagement would come in handy, but is not strictly required. In view of the explorative nature of the research activities, we need someone with a high degree of curiosity who is willing to reach out to people and organizations within and outside UU to learn more.
